Dear Richard
Thank you very much for trying this out. It looks really good. Not all the
formatting is quite right, as I am sure you know e.g. in the examples, and
especially in Appendix D. I see that the doc doesn't say which version it is.
I expect you're still working on it.
If this is easier than using docbook to generate the html and pdf then it
sounds attractive. I have never used docbook. Jeff Painter's opinion would
be valuable.
In the "official" version there is markup for changed text, as you know. Is
there a way to do this? In fact there is a question, which we've discussed
before, about whether we should alter the rules for updates so we don't
have to mark so many changes as provisional. At the moment, all changes ever
since the first version are still shown as provisional because we have no
rule for accepting them as permanent. If we change the rules, however, we might
still want to show changes for a while, so a way to do it would be helpful.
My main concern is review. CF changes are agreed in trac tickets, and the
trac ticket should say exactly what text change is to be made. Once we reach
that stage, we then have to decide who is going to make that change in the
document source, when they are going to make it, and who will check that it
has been done correctly. Up to now, one person (currently Jeff) has made all
the changes, at once, and others have informally reviewed the html, for each
version. These are governance issues, rather than software issues.
Best wishes
Jonathan
----- Forwarded message from "Hattersley, Richard" <richard.hattersley at metoffice.gov.uk> -----
> Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 16:03:48 +0000
> From: "Hattersley, Richard" <richard.hattersley at metoffice.gov.uk>
> To: CF Metadata List <cf-metadata at cgd.ucar.edu>
> Subject: [CF-metadata] Editing/publishing workflow update
>
> Dear all,
>
> Summary for the time-pressed reader:
> - Some of us would like to simplify the workflow for editing the CF conventions.
> - I've made a work-in-progress demo here: http://cf-metadata.github.io/cf-conventions.html.
> - The demo is automatically built from AsciiDoc sources here: https://github.com/cf-metadata/cf-conventions-asciidoc
> - Feedback welcome! What's the appetite for exploring further?
>
> I've recently delved back into the options for simplifying and automating the workflow for modifying the CF conventions document. This is in the light of some useful discussion early last year, and a friendly nudge from Rich Signell (thanks Rich!).
>
> In general, this has been an encouraging exploration. Fortunately we are not at the technological vanguard of the publishing world - others with greater resources (e.g. O'Reilly) have already paved the way. As a result I believe we can achieve a very workable solution based around the AsciiDoc format<http://asciidoctor.org/docs/what-is-asciidoc/>.
>
> There are three main problems I've been looking at:
>
> 1. How to get from the current DocBook sources to AsciiDoc?
>
> 2. How to make the authoring/reviewing process easier?
>
> 3. How to convert AsciiDoc to HTML and PDF?
>
> To get from DocBook to AsciiDoc I have extended an existing solution<https://github.com/rhattersley/docbook2asciidoc> from O'Reilly. They use the AsciiDoc format in their Atlas publishing platform so they have already done most of the hard work. Where possible I'd like to get my extensions merged into their original.
>
> The authoring/reviewing process relies on GitHub pull requests and their built-in support for rendering AsciiDoc. This provides a good preview of the document (although some features of the final HTML output are not rendered), and an inline reviewing system. (NB. I've split the document into multiple files, but that is not essential.) Once a change has been accepted the corresponding HTML (and eventually PDF) is automatically rebuilt and pushed to the demo website.
>
> To get from AsciiDoc to HTML/PDF I have used the excellent asciidoctor<http://asciidoctor.org/> software for HTML and a sister project for PDF. The HTML support is excellent but the PDF solution is less mature (there is an alternative which might do better). That said, both projects are under active support/development and are open to contribution.
>
> Questions, feedback, encouragement, offers of assistance and/or beer ... they're all welcome! ;-)
>
>
> Richard Hattersley AVD Expert Software Developer
> Met Office FitzRoy Road Exeter Devon EX1 3PB United Kingdom
> Tel: +44 (0)1392 885702 Fax: +44 (0)1392 885681
> Email: richard.hattersley at metoffice.gov.uk<mailto:richard.hattersley at metoffice.gov.uk> Website: www.metoffice.gov.uk<http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/>
>
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----- End forwarded message -----
Received on Tue Jan 27 2015 - 09:31:30 GMT
